


Tatterdemalion

by beetle



Category: Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:15:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On their travels, Markl and Calcifer happen upon a mystery. Yes, that's a lame summary, but if you can do better, let's hear it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tatterdemalion

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Set nine years after the movie.

The apprentice wizard and the fire-demon stare at the huge mounds of tattered cloth piled in the yards wide ditch between the Porthaven Road and the brambles that run alongside it. Stare for  _awhile_  before Calcifer finally snorts brief, crackling laughter.  
  
  
“Say, think there's somethin' alive under there?”  
  
  
Markl squints in the afternoon sunlight, and frowns at the tattered bundle. It gives off no aura he can see or sense. “You'd know better than me, oh, Greatest of fire-demons. I'm not Seeing anything but stinky old circus-tarp and dust.”  
  
  
“A circus tent in black? Yeah, right. And you know carnies: waste not, want not. They wouldn't leave even this old thing behind,” Calcifer huffs, leaning forward over the edge of his ewer (the one Markl carries him in when he's feeling lazy. Which is pretty often, for a being with phenomenal cosmic powers). His goggly eyes narrow like he might need glasses, and that strikes Markl as funny, though he doesn't laugh. Calcifer seems offended enough as it is.  
  
  
“There might be somethin' under there, but I can't tell what. It's like all this nasty cloth's been warded, or shielded . . .  _somethin_ '. The Six Cities could be under there, and I wouldn't be able to sense them!”  
  
  
Scratching absently at the itchy, scraggly growth of beard that's actually just ambitious peach-fuzz, Markl sighs. This exchange is starting to have all the earmarks of an argument. And over moldering, ugly fabric, no less. “Could that possibly be because the Six Cities  _aren't_  under there, d'ya think?”  
  
  
Calcifer banks a little, sinking below the opening of the ewer till just his eyes are showing. He's sulking. “You have no imagination, kid."  
  
  
“I've got plenty 'magination,” Markl doesn't know whether that's true or not, but doesn't especially care. He's rarely bored, and that's enough for him. Always has been. “I'm just saying that maybe the reason you sense nothing under there, is because . . . there's nothing to sense.”  
  
  
“Look, when I said I didn't sense anything, I meant it's like there's a void under that cloth. I don't sense grass, earth, earthworms, groundhogs--whatever the heck crawls around underground. There's  _nothing_  under that cloth.”  
  
  
“Impossible. There's no such thing as  _no_ -thing. 'Void' is just a word the Blind use to describe what they can't See.” Markl purses his lips and quirks them to one side. Rubs his sun-burned nose with a grubby, blunt finger and eyes the tatters a little bit more thoughtfully. Near the center of the fabric, he can almost make out a shape under a flat-ish section. Could be any number of things, and Markl's actually curious, now. “Which is a lot. Huh. Maybe you could . . . burn it away?”  
  
  
“Uh.” Calcifer shrinks even deeper into the ewer, something he hasn't done in a very long time. “Maybe. But how 'bout I don't and say I did?”  
  
  
Markl lets his eyebrows speak for him. From the fidgety way Calcifer starts crackling, they must speak volumes. He even flares up just a bit.  
  
  
“Look, whatever this thing is--whatever's under that ratty old garbage don't wanna be seen. I think caution might be, you know. Smart, 'cause. . . you know, all that stuff Sophie told us before we left,” he adds defensively. “We dunno what-all's under there, or what that stuff is made of, so I don't think  _I_  should be eating it. The last time I ate unidentified magic, it did  _not_  go down well.”  
  
  
“Point,” Markl admits, then whispers a few basic revealing spells under his breath. Nothing . . . Sees literally no-thing. To his magic--neither as powerful as Howl's, nor as sensitive as little Effie's--this pile of tattered cloth is merely that. And it's covering a void that can't exist, for if it existed, it would be  _some-_ thing.  
  
  
Not one for buying or borrowing trouble, Markl would be inclined to accept the evidence of his sixth and seventh senses and leave well enough alone. But for the creeping feeling in his stomach: cold and churning, like a man who's just walked over his own grave. But for a similar feeling tingling it's way up his spine. Disturbing, on such a warm, bright day.  
  
  
Then again . . . something, masquerading as nothing, and doing so well enough to stymie a fire-demon . . . from a theoretical stand-point alone, this is likely the most interesting problem any wizard's stumbled across since the War ended.  
  
  
And so, not one for shying away from any problem (he's always found magical theory far more interesting than the practice itself. Spells are known quantities that he long ago grew bored with), Markl can't  _not_  investigate. “Hmm . . . only one way to find out what's under there, I suppose.”  
  
  
“And how's that, oh, Great Wizard Jenkins?” The fire-demon flares up a little more, in blithe spirits again.  
  
  
Markl smiles a little, visions of being made the youngest Theoretical Adept in three generations dancing in his head. For a few moments only; rationally, he knows finding a . . . No-thing cloth is not the same as  _inventing_  one. “The old-fashioned way.”  
  
  
Placing Calcifer's ewer well back from the bundle, near the largest bramble patch--just in case the fire-demon might need fuel in a hurry--he hunts around their immediate vicinity for a decent sized yardstick. Finds one in less than ten seconds--or three bramble scratches in his faded worsted shirt. Stumps back past Calcifer, removing extraneous offshoots and leaves from his find.  
  
  
“Ah, lunch, first! Good thinking! Feed the fire-demon! Om-nom-nom-nom-nom!” Calcifer kicks up a jig in his ewer at the prospect of being fed. Never mind that since he's been free, he can conjure himself and anything he wants to any-damned-where he pleases. Like a cat, Calcifer craves the attention more than anything.  
  
  
“Um. Not quite, buddy,” Markl levels his yardstick at the bundle--careful not to step on even a trailer of the cloth--which may or may not hide a No-thing. A No-thing that may, or may not be alive, may or may not be dangerous. The wise move, he knows, would be to Summon Howl, and have  _him_  investigate. "En guarde, knave!"  
  
  
Then again, neither he, nor Calcifer have ever been accused of being wise.  
  
  
After the first anticlimactic pokes, Markl's wariness fades, as does that strange feeling in his stomach. The bloody-mindedness that Sophie'd all but loved and mothered out of him rears it's head. He pokes at piles of moth-eaten cloth ferociously, putting holes in worn fabric and exposing more worn fabric. Small, dry clouds of dust waft up from the tatters, smelling of old, old ashes and decay, and before Markl knows it, he's standing on the cloth, aiming for the big hump in the center, using the yardstick to shove aside a few problematic skeins in his path.  
  
  
“Yeah--go for it, kid! Really put your arm into it!” Calcifer cheers, like a hearth on a winter night. Back bowed under the westering summer sun, Markl whoops breathlessly and works his way in toward the epicenter of the ever more ratty bundle, sturdy boots sliding on small cloth-hummocks.  
  
  
Suddenly, he trips on something solid that he'd  _thought_  was more fabric. Consequently he trips, stumbles, and falls on top of it, sending up alarmingly large clouds of dust that makes him cough and choke.  
  
  
“ _Vile_! These rags smell like a campfire that got  _pissed_  out!” he complains at volume, and Calcifer crackles out laughter like a house on fire. “Son of a--”  
  
  
Then the solid-thing  _twitches_ , and Markl falls silent, eyes saucer-wide. He slowly begins backing off of it and away, trying not to sneeze. The twitching intensifies, as does the almost oppressively cheerful beam and beat of the sun overhead, and just as Markl clears the solid-thing, it starts to . . .  _rise_.  
  
  
“Ack!” He scrambles back as the center of the fabric now quivers agitatedly. Calcifer's stopped laughing and has darted out of his ewer to hover over Markl's right shoulder. He's big enough and bright enough to make sweat trickle down Markl's ribs and temple.  
  
  
“What, uh . . . was that saying about curiosity and cats?” he asks, backing up a few feet more, Calcifer with him every step of the way. Meanwhile, the cloth is roiling in fits and starts, as if whatever's under it is struggling out sluggishly, with little energy to urge it on. It works its way to the edge of fabric nearest Markl, where it pauses . . . then the cover is flung off violently, yards of moldering, musty fabric tumbling away to reveal. . . .  
  
  
A  _boy_.  
  
  
A dirty, skinny, scabby  _boy_ , with tear-tracks and healing scratches on his smudged face, and holes in his ancient, once-fine, no-color clothes. Slump-shouldered and shaking, he kneels like a penitent, eyes closed tight and grimy hands clasping together as if in prayer.  
  
  
Squaring his shoulders and ignoring his racing heart (and fight-or-flight response), Markl drops his voice an octave. Pulls on the Wizard Jenkins like the costume he is, and glowers with stiff disapproval. “Who're you, child, and what are you doing sleeping out in the open, under rags? And this close to Porthaven Road? That's a good way to wake up in the afterlife, y'know.”  
  
  
(It feels more than a tad hypocritical taking such a tone--calling someone who's  _maybe_  three years his junior  _child_ , but Markl's none-too-thrilled with this  _boy_  at the moment. Or himself.)  
  
  
The tatterdemalion's brown eyes open, thick-lashed and obliquely slanted at the corners. One shaking hand twines in his own dark, grown-out hair--which has feathers and sticks and straw in it--and the other clutches something so small that it's hidden completely by bony, filthy fingers. He stares at Markl questioningly, as if trying to place his face, tugging distractedly on ragged, shaggy locks.  
  
  
“Well?” Markl demands gruffly, blushing and putting his hands on his hips the way Sophie does when she expects her family to step smartly. At his shoulder Calcifer hovers and hisses something Markl can't make out. The boy's bleary, confused gaze ticks back and forth between them, and his mouth opens . . . but no sound comes out. For some reason, that makes Markl disapprove even more. “Go on, explain yourself, boy! I haven't got all day!”  
  
  
Dark, dazed,  _exhausted_  eyes roll north, then east. Then up at the sky . . . then up, and up, and then the boy's unconscious in a heap on his pile of cloth.  
  
  
Markl and Calcifer look at each other as another dust clouds flies, then settles. As one, they back at the unconscious boy's peaky, tranquil face and scarecrow form. In the syrupy, golden-light, he looks like a tarnished angel. Like an ancient statue left on top of a rubbish heap.  
  
  
"Um," Markl says.  
  
  
“Boy. You've really got a way with words, oh, Great One,” the fire demon notes.  
  



End file.
